Well Read Column by Robert Weibezahl

H.G. Wells was not the first writer to imagine time travel, but his 1895 novel, The Time Machine, captured the Victorian imagination and still endures as a canonical work of speculative fiction. Now Spanish writer Félix J. Palma has appropriated the visionary writer as the central character of his own novel, The Map of Time, a brawny, genre-bending historical entertainment. In three...

Feature by Sean Melican

This month’s picks take us from the exciting world of artificial intelligence to that of a criminal genius to the very best best-of-the-year collection.One of the most wildly anticipated technological feats possible in our lifetime is the development of genuine artificial intelligence. Luckily for us, Robert J. Sawyer has written a series covering a wide range of the issues and obstacles...

Absorbing the enemy

Laurie Marks's rich and affecting new novel Earth Logic is the second book in her Elemental Logic series which began with Fire Logic (warmly reviewed here in May 2002). Thirty-five years ago, a refugee Sainnite army invaded the land of Shaftal. However, without reinforcements, which aren't coming, the occupying army won't be able to hold on much longer. Because they have maltreated the...

Sci-fi Column by Gavin Grant

Karl Schroeder's second novel, Permanence, starts in the tradition of a Heinlein juvenile, then takes off across the universe into the realms of Gregory Benford and Vernor Vinge. Schroeder has hidden a philosophical novel in action novel clothing. He uses flashy and fun conventional science fiction ideas like jaunts across the galaxy and meetings between aliens and humans to sneak in digs...